![]() ![]() Most European countries had lost virtually a generation of their young men. Disillusionment with international and national politics and a sense of distrust in political leaders and government officials spread throughout the consciousness of a public which had witnessed the ravages of a devastating four-year conflict. Cultural Despairįinally, the destruction and catastrophic loss of life during World War I led to what can best be described as a cultural despair in many former combatant nations. Similar conditions benefited rightwing authoritarian and totalitarian systems in eastern Europe as well, beginning with the losers of World War I, and eventually raised levels of tolerance for and acquiescence in violent antisemitism and discrimination against national minorities throughout the region. These fears and challenges also increased public longing for more authoritarian direction, a kind of leadership which German voters ultimately and unfortunately found in Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party. The difficulties imposed by social and economic unrest following World War I and its severe peace terms, along with the raw fear of the potential for a Communist takeover in the German middle classes, worked to undermine pluralistic democratic solutions in Weimar Germany. During the prison sentence he wrote his political manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). ![]() On the other hand, radical rightwing activists like Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party had attempted to depose the government of Bavaria and commence a "national revolution" in the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, served only nine months of a five year prison sentence for treason-which was a capital offense. This fear shifted German political sentiment decidedly toward right-wing causes.Īgitators from the political left served heavy prison sentences for inspiring political unrest. Meanwhile, there was fear of an imminent Communist threat following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and short-lived Communist revolutions or coups in Hungary (Bela Kun) and in Germany itself (e.g., the Sparticist Uprising). The German nationalist Right promised to revise the Versailles Treaty through force if necessary, and such promises gained traction in respectable circles. They tried to steer their compatriots away from polarization to the radical Left and Right. They now felt compelled to support the Weimar Republic as the least worst alternative. Vernunftsrepublikaner ("republicans by reason"), individuals like the historian Friedrich Meinecke and Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, had at first resisted democratic reform. It helped to further discredit German socialist and liberal circles who felt most committed to maintain Germany's fragile democratic experiment. ![]() This Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) was initiated and fanned by retired German wartime military leaders, who, well aware in 1918 that Germany could no longer wage war, had advised the Kaiser to sue for peace. They recalled only that the German Left-Socialists, Communists, and Jews, in common imagination-had surrendered German honor to a disgraceful peace when no foreign armies had even set foot on German soil. Many Germans forgot that they had applauded the fall of the emperor (the Kaiser), had initially welcomed parliamentary democratic reform, and had rejoiced at the armistice. The harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles led many in the general population to believe that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by the "November criminals." By "November Criminals" they meant those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and broker the peace which Germans had so desperately wanted, but which had ended so disastrously in the Versailles Treaty. The social and economic upheaval that followed World War I gave rise to many radical right wing parties in Weimar Germany. ![]() Many Germans felt that Germany's prestige should be regained through remilitarization and expansion. Įfforts of the western European powers to marginalize Germany undermined and isolated its democratic leaders. ![]()
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